And why were the photographs taken in the first place?  Are they simply barracks-room pornography for an Army riddled by the same pathologies that eat through the muscle of American society?  Are enlisted men and women really so dim as to think they can take scores of photos of themselves engaging in conduct both grotesque and illegal and not get caught and punished?  Or was there another purpose behind taking the photographs that few have yet grasped?

Pfc. Lynndie England, the new poster girl of the U.S. occupation of Iraq who has replaced Jessica Lynch as the iconic American Amazon, gave an interview to KCNC-TV in Denver soon after being hauled back to this country to face charges.  Pfc. England has every motive to lie her little behind off to get out of those charges, and what she says by itself may be no more than a lie.  But then again, maybe it’s not, and it is worth considering, especially in conjunction with other information.

“I was instructed by persons in higher rank to ‘stand there, hold this leash, look at the camera,’ and they took pictures for PsyOps,” she told the station.  PsyOps?  Psychological Operations, of course.  Well, wasn’t the purpose of the abuse and the photos to twist information out of the prisoners, in accordance with misguided military-intelligence directions?

In part, no doubt it was, and that is insidious enough, as well as stupid.  Assuming that rank-and-file prisoners have any useful information about Iraqi resistance operations and capacities they are unwilling to spill, there are undoubtedly more efficient ways of getting it out of them.  There are the proverbial rack and thumbscrews, which worked well enough for Catholic and Protestant alike for a couple of centuries.  There are drugs that both the CIA and the KGB deployed in years past.  Finally, there are perfectly harmless and nonintrusive and nonviolent interrogation techniques by which skilled examiners can elicit information and cooperation from most subjects at first unwilling to utter an intelligible sound.  But how effective making the subjects crawl around nude on dog leashes with women’s underwear on their heads might be for getting important inside dope is a question that the humane sciences have yet to resolve adequately.

So what was the real purpose, if military intelligence wasn’t it?  As the scandal began to break last May, the Washington Post carried a lengthy report on what the abuses mean in terms of their cultural and social impact on the world’s Newest Democracy on the Euphrates.

“Not only do the photographs up-end traditional gender roles—homosexuality is a strict taboo in Islam, and women, through practices like veiling, are encouraged to take a demure attitude towards sexual matters—but the casual treatment of nudity itself is offensive to many.  In Saudi Arabia, for example, customers in gymnasium locker rooms are admonished not to let others see them as they change,” the Post commented.

The paper quoted anthropologist Donald Cole, at the American University in Cairo, on what may have been the real purpose of the torture.  “The idea is to humiliate people in ways . . . that really affect their manhood, their identity, their notions of shame.  It is playing with people’s minds.”  PsyOps.  Just so.

By this interpretation, the photographs were neither an orgiastic lark for the grunts nor a desperate effort to collect “intelligence” but part of a campaign of psychological and cultural warfare, aimed not just at the prisoners in Abu Ghraib but at Iraqi—and, more broadly, Arabic—culture itself.

Back in February, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz published an article in the Washington Post about the forthcoming “liberation” of women in Iraq that would be one of the main achievements of the American conquest.  “The United States is giving special emphasis to helping Iraqi women achieve greater equality and has allocated $27 million for women’s programs,” he wrote.

“Liberating” women is certainly what we would expect from the crusade to spread “democracy” and its blessings around the globe at the point of our bayonets, but, in traditional societies such as those of Iraq and the Middle East, “liberating” women means psychologically castrating men—the deliberate destruction of the psychic, moral, and cultural spine of the society.  By putting women—especially American infidel women who fight in battle, wear men’s clothes, and bare their faces—in charge of male Arabs and dishing out sexual sadism, the “abuses” aim at the heart of the patriarchal culture and its symbols of masculinity.

What was going on in Abu Ghraib (and other places) seems to have been more than “abuse” and also more than just “torture.”  It was an inherent part of the global imperial system that the architects of the war have already designed, a tactic by which we are systematically devastating a culture and the people that culture defines whom architects of the war like Mr. Wolfowitz hate and wish to eradicate far more than the “global democracy” they purport to love.  Mr. Wolfowitz’s enthusiasm for “liberating” Iraqi women may give us a clue as to just how high the authorization for the abuses went—and who authorized them.

This article first appeared in the July 2004 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Hatemongers
by Thomas Fleming

Stopping our ears.

VIEWS

CAIR and the ADL: Partnership for Hate
by Srdja Trifkovic
What becomes of the race opportunists?

What Kind of Freedom?
by Doug Bandow
Picking and choosing liberties to defend.

The Myth of an Antiglobalist Left
by William R. Hawkins
Marx, waiting in the wings.

NEWS

Strictly From Hunger
by Kevin Michael Grace
The Morris Dees story.

Washington’s Imperial Socialism
by Ted Galen Carpenter
American Marxism in Iraq.

REVIEWS

Russell Kirk and the Negation of Ideology
by Scott P. Richert

W. Wesley McDonald: Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology

The Dialectic of Suicide
by Samuel Francis

Samuel P. Huntington: Who Are We?  The Cultural 
Core of American National Identity

plus

Laurence M. Vance on John Merrifield’s School Choices: True and False and Clint Bolick’s Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle Over School Choice

Chilton Williamson, Jr., on David Frum’s and Richard Perle’s An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror

CORRESPONDENCE

Letter From Moscow: Gigantic Weaknesses
by Curtis Cate

Letter to the Bishop: The Fornicators’ Mass
by Joe Ecclesia

Letter From Mexico: Portrait of a Failed Society
by V. Groginsky

Letter From Italy: “Peaceful” Immigrants
by Alberto Carosa

VITAL SIGNS

THEATER: Delightful Murders and Sheer Torture
by James Moses

CHRISTIANITY: Mushy Ecclesial Thinking
by Mark Tooley

TOTALITARIANISM: The Last Kulak in Europe
by Andrei Navrozov

COLUMNS

THE WESTERN FRONT
by Paul Gottfried

IN THE DARK
The Punisher, Man on Fire, Mean Girls
by George McCartney

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD
by Chilton Williamson, Jr.

DEPARTMENTS

POLEMICS & EXCHANGES
AMERICAN PROSCENIUM
CULTURAL REVOLUTIONS

POETRY
Cholesterol by David Middleton
A Faux-Christian Focus and
A Crescent Moon by Catherine Munch       

ON THE COVER

Cover and inside illustrations by H. Ward Sterett and Melanie Anderson.

I would call such a man, no matter what party he belongs to or principles he espouses, an instinctive conservative.  Leftists, however, particularly the leftist tentacles of the institutional octopus of hate that is strangling both civilization and freedom, would call him a bigot and an antisemite.  I am obviously referring to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, and all other attack-dog organizations, leftist newspapers, anti-Christian magazines, anti-European newsletters, and antiheterosexual websites that prowl the world seeking the destruction of souls.

It is an easy trick of propaganda to portray all natural affections in the dark colors of prejudice.  Why would anyone like the South if it were not for slavery and Jim Crow?  Who but an antisemite objects to the slaughter of the (semitic) Palestinians?  Only a communist or a Jew would oppose the Führer.

To change the value of words is a more ambitious project.  There was a time when prejudice did not mean hatred of other races; when patriarchy referred to a specific set of social institutions found, for example, in the early books of the Old Testament; when Southern was not a term of abuse; and when fundamentalist and integralist were not applied to fanatical Muslims who practice terrorism.  Even such words as fascist and right-wing, liberal and leftist, once upon a time had agreed-upon meanings.  Now they are merely terms of abuse or praise.  In Italy, Umberto Bossi, whose Lega Nord favors free enterprise and a decentralized political structure, is routinely denounced as a “fascist,” despite the fact that his positions are the opposite of the Fascist Party’s program and that modern fascists and ex-fascists hate his guts.

The first impulse on hearing of such travesties is to say, “How Orwellian” and then move on.  The phenomenon is far older than Orwell, however, and the corruption lies deeper.  Conservatives are fond of quoting Thucydides’ (3.82.4) observations on the political distortion of language.  In a conventional translation, Thucydides does sound a great deal like the author of 1984, railing against the manipulation of language practiced by the rulers of a revolutionary regime:

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.  Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any.  Frantic violence, became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense.

Thucydides is not an easy writer to understand, and his opening sentence is particularly difficult.  Literally translated, it means something like this: “They changed the customary valuation of words in relation to reality by means of a process of justification.”  In other words, as Jonathan Price has argued in a recent book, words did not simply change their meaning: Political leaders manipulated the value of words so that good words now had bad connotations and vice versa.

Then there is the question of revolution.  The Greek word is stasis, which means something like a civil war between two political factions.  Staseis were not always clashes of opposing principles.  The conflict might be between rival clans or between contestants for power (or, as in Mytilene during the days of Sappho and Alcaeus, both).  Naturally, each party would use every verbal trick in portraying itself as the defender of the better cause, but Thucydides, in describing the stasis on the island of Corcyra, goes further, arguing that, during the period of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek cities were morally corrupted.  The relevant modern parallel for Thucydides’ analysis is not so much the propaganda issued by revolutionary regimes (whether international socialist or national socialist) but the demonization practiced by the leaders of factions, movements, and parties against their rivals.

Leftists, naturally, would seize upon this to issue their usual denunciations of McCarthyism.  To some extent, they would be justified.  Anti-Marxists have gone overboard, from time to time, in equating all forms of leftism and liberalism with communism.  This was a serious mistake, since Marxism was only one of the more perverse expressions of the liberal mentality, though, in fact, feminism, homosexualism, and vegetarianism are even more perverse.  The enemy was never really Marxism per se but liberalism in all its forms: not just the liberalism of Rousseau but the liberalism of Voltaire; not just the socialism of Marx but the destructive antisocialism of John Stuart Mill.

Conservatives might be pardoned for their excesses in the 1950’s.  Without understanding how or why, they had been on the losing end of every political, social, religious, and cultural revolution since the 15th century.  By the time Senator McCarthy entered politics, men and women with conservative instincts could only use liberal arguments to defend their positions.  These were the people who loved their country but did not entirely trust the massive leftist government erected by the New Dealers, and yet, when challenged to state their beliefs, they could only fall back on the slogans of radical individualism that had been the propaganda terms used in an earlier phase of the revolution.  Small wonder that the conservative movement, as it was mistakenly called, was preyed upon by such liberal kooks as Ayn Rand.

To speak of a “conservative mind” in America is somewhat misleading.  The average American does have a conservative heart, but his mind has been so addled by bad teachers, bad books, and bad ideas that he often feels guilty if he prefers to limit his charity to his neighbors, if he resents the money squandered on public schools, if he does not share in the general glee over the massive immigration that is transforming the country of his fathers into something he cannot recognize.  He is easily intimidated when the left condemns this vague, inchoate mixture of family loyalty and patriotism as the bigotry of the “extreme right.”  In fact, the ultraleft Southern Poverty Law Center is always railing against “right-wing extremism,” by which they mean everyone to the right of the New Republic—up to and including Matthew Hale.

Reduced to the clichés of politics, conservatives are guilty of hating and oppressing non-European racial and ethnic groups, persecuting non-Christians (especially Jews), exploiting and impoverishing the working classes, destroying the environment, and waging destructive wars.  Leftists, by contrast, promote racial and religious tolerance, work selflessly for the welfare of the working classes, preserve the environment, and, to cap it all, they always “give peace a chance.”  Leftists know this to be true, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

In the 20th century, the preeminent leftist governments were the Marxist regimes in the Soviet Union and its satellites in China and Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia.  We did not really need the Black Book of Communism to tell us that all these regimes are evil.  The regimes in China and the Soviet Union killed over 100 million people, started and waged wars of aggression, stole property from peasants who were reduced to slavery, ruthlessly exploited the workers, and destroyed the environment.  As for ethnic and religious tolerance, let the Jews murdered by Stalin or the Tibetans crushed even to this day by China cry out for vengeance.

What about Hitler? whine the leftists, their feelings wounded.  In the first place, he is a piker compared with Mao and Stalin.  Second, he was a revolutionary socialist whose only conservative appeal was that he was saving the Germans from the communists.  His regime was neither traditional nor Christian, and his propagandists never tired of proclaiming how revolutionary and progressive they were.  Though Mussolini had been a leader of the Socialist Party and remained anti-Catholic until the end, Fascist Italy was far more conservative than Nazi Germany.  And Fascist Italy, though I find it vulgar and unappealing, was heaven on earth compared with any international socialist or national socialist regime, precisely because the zaniness of Fascist ideology was tempered by the conservative Italian character and by the participation of many non-Fascist conservatives in the government.

Leftists like to apply the “fascist” label to conservatives, and, in the process, they equate fascist with Nazi, a lie they can get away with because the leftists who control our schools make sure that Americans grow up stupid, ignorant, and helpless.  On the other hand, leftists scream bloody murder if their own principles are described as Marxist, socialist, or communist—which they are.

Some years ago, I took part in a symposium devoted to a deceased Southern conservative.  Near the end of the final session, two former communists waxed eloquent on their late friend’s failure to speak out against segregation—the worst moral evil of the 20th century.  This was too much even for my easygoing disposition.  I began quietly, explaining the difficult position which morally responsible Southerners were in, and pointed out that even Faulkner, though he opposed segregation, said he would side with his state against outside meddlers.  Finally, I concluded, I had to wonder about the moral sense of people who had spent their adult lives as apologists for Stalin and Mao, dictators who had murdered many tens of millions of innocent people, but were now indulging in moral outrage against separate drinking fountains.  They were as hypocritical as the New York Times writers who condemned Richard Nixon’s low crimes and misdemeanors without ever apologizing for having condoned Stalin’s mass murder.

There, in a nutshell, is the difference between them and us.  Our fathers and grandfathers told race jokes and belonged to restricted clubs; their fathers and grandfathers shilled for Stalin or the equally bloodthirsty Trotsky.  No, we are not perfect, and, yes, conservative societies have, on occasion, betrayed their deepest principles and committed terrible crimes.  They, however, since the days of Robespierre, have committed mass theft and mass murder on principle.  And, when they lack the power to kill and rob, they make do with corrupting the young with pornography; destroying marriage with feminism and homosexualism; undermining our morals with Freudianism and behaviorism; warping our sense of beauty with free verse, abstract expressionist painting, and Bauhaus architecture; and, if we dare to complain, they cry, “antisemite,” as if Jackson Pollock or the Bauhaus architects were Jewish.

Yes, in addition to their other fine qualities, leftists are chronic liars about every subject they discuss, from Athenian democracy to the dangers of secondhand smoke.  Even the term they often use to describe themselves, liberal, is a lie.  American liberals are nonrevolutionary socialists, and their allies to the left are unreconstructed Marxists.  We ought to forgive them, I suppose, because they have no choice.  When your entire worldview is based on counterfactual assumptions about human nature—the equality of the sexes, the immorality of private property and status, the artificiality of the family, etc.—you cannot help lying about everything, whether the subject under discussion is women in the military, the dangers of asbestos, the “epidemic” of father-daughter incest, or the effectiveness of public education.

Why should any conservative care if he is attacked by the leftists of the SPLC and ADL or those of the New York Times?  These people have lies in their mouths, blood on their hands for the great genocides of the 20th century, and guilt on their consciences for the seduction of the innocent and the destruction of our civilization.  Our task, as our late friend Mel Bradford put it, is to remember who we are and stop our ears against the siren songs of the revolutionists, which have proved to be not the anthems of a new dawn but a message of hate and filth that leads to destruction.

This article first appeared in the July 2004 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt, Reagan did not deceive and manipulate his country into war through outright and covert aggression against foreign nations.  Unlike Harry S. Truman, Reagan did not cover up for known Soviet agents such as Alger Hiss and then vilify patriots who tried to expose them and bring them to justice.  Unlike Dwight D. Eisenhower, he did not engineer the deliberate starvation of thousands of German civilians after World War II nor contrive to send thousands of Soviet POW’s back to be massacred by Stalin in “Operation Keelhaul.” Unlike John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon, Reagan did not steal the presidential election outright, use the government to spy on and harass his political rivals, or cover up criminal conduct within his own administration.

It may be that Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter did not commit such crimes either, but in the case of these two mediocrities, their innocence may have been simply because of lack of imagination rather than character.  Reagan was by far the most principled man to serve as president in half a century.

And yet, given the expectations of the Reagan presidency that virtually all American conservatives had, he was a disappointment.  It is simply a myth that he won the Cold War or destroyed the Soviet Union, and every serious anticommunist at the time knew that.

In 1987, Rep. Jim Courter, a strong anticommunist congressman of the era, wrote in the Heritage Foundation’s Policy Review that “pronouncements by the administration about ‘having the Soviets on the run’ are totally unwarranted,” and, when Reagan left office in 1989, George Will remarked, “Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West . . . by elevating wishful thinking to the status of political philosophy.”  The Soviets collapsed shortly afterward mainly because of their own internal economic and political incoherence, not because Reagan defeated them.

Reagan’s most successful policies were economic, which is why the economic determinists who today dominate conservatism gush over him so much, and he did meet the challenges of an eroding economic base misguided by economic illiteracies and political demagoguery.  But the federal leviathan, by the time he left office, was even larger and more powerful than when he entered, with bigger budgets, one more federal department, and unfulfilled promises of abolishing two existing departments.

What the American right of that era wanted from Ronald Reagan more than anything else was a counterrevolution against the cultural domination of liberalism.  In that respect, Reagan was a miserable failure.  Throughout his administration, the poison of “political correctness” and its grim sister of multiculturalism took over the nation’s universities and media, aided by the mass immigration that began to take off in the Reagan years and to which he and his administration were largely oblivious.  (In 1986, administration-backed legislation delivered an amnesty for illegal aliens.)

He did little to stop or push back affirmative action; the Voting Rights Act was extended (with the help of Newt Gingrich), and the Martin Luther King, Jr., federal holiday became law.  The Reagan years were critical to the racial and cultural revolution that has now enthroned itself.

Neoconservatives like to claim Ronald Reagan as one of their own and to wrap themselves in his mantle, but he was never what we today call a “neocon.”  Unlike them, he was a Goldwater conservative who first came to public political attention by his rousing endorsement of Goldwater on the very eve of his 1964 defeat.  From that moment until 1980, the American right defined itself around a Reagan candidacy and the promise of what he would do when he took office.  Reagan was a “neoconservative” only in the sense that he was a liberal who became a conservative.  The conservatism he embraced was not simply a watered-down version of liberalism purporting to be something else.

Therefore, you can’t really blame Reagan’s inadequacies as a conservative on neoconservatism, nor can you blame him as a man.  You probably have to blame the ideology itself—which insisted that it really was “morning in America” when, in fact, it was far closer to the 11th hour.  Only a right willing and able to tell the time correctly and explain it to Americans will be able to perceive and confront the challenges Ronald Reagan missed.  The right he represented and led couldn’t do that.

This article first appeared in the July 2004 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.